Additional Team Members - Sarah Goldzweig.
The Great Regeneration Team project: Mark Maughan, Tim Cowbury, Emma Blackman.
Immediate Theatre: Eleanor Clark, Gavin Dent, Kyarna Morris, Frank Bertoletti, Montell Pemberton, Shemi Olaniran, Nicky Wilson.
We Want Your Views is a public engagement project designed to empower young people from London Borough of Hackney’s Nightingale Estate to share their views on regeneration in their local area using a combination of creative mapping techniques — facilitated by UCL researchers — and performance exercises — facilitated by theatre-maker project partners. The project partners for this work are acclaimed East London theatre-makers Mark Maughan (Director) and Tim Cowbury (Writer) and Immediate Theatre (Hackney estate-based theatre company established for 20+ years). It was funded by the UCL East Engagement Seed Fund. Over four after-school sessions from late- April through May 2022, and a three-day intensive workshop during the summer half-term, the young people co-produced — alongside UCL researchers and other project partners — a creative output (a performance-based presentation) combined with a digital visual element. This performance took place in the Nightingale Community Hall in front of an audience made up of local stakeholders including Nightingale Estate residents and community members and Hackney councillors and council officers.
This project links directly to the work on co-producing knowledge with communities, which Dr Pablo Sendra has been developing over the last five years. The activity was developed in close conversation with Immediate Theatre, who has many years of experience working with young people in East London, and specifically on the Nightingale Estate. This engagement forms an important part in Mark Maughan and Tim Cowbury’s forthcoming theatre project, The Great Regeneration Scheme, which will tour the UK and internationally, and involve the publication of a theatre text. We Want Your Views has been planned with Mark and Tim as the first step in a participation model that will continue as part of The Great Regeneration Scheme. Mark and Tim envisage We Want Your Views being repeated or developed with other communities in East London and beyond, as their wider project unfolds. This model will be shaped by final evaluative conversations at the end of this project, including feedback from the young people and Immediate Theatre. This project was funded by UCL East Engagement Seed Fund.
